In general, ophthalmic operations mean eyesight correction surgeries such as lasik, lasek, wavefront and excimer laser, and eye disease treatments such as operations on cataract and glaucoma.
For such ophthalmic operation, high precision and accuracy are required, since it is an important operation to treat human eyes and the size of an affected part is relatively small.
Accordingly, during this ophthalmic operation, there should be provided a picture system for ophthalmic operation to keep observation closely on the affected part and the progress made by the operation, and a microscope for ophthalmic operation is widely used among such microscope systems for ophthalmic operation.
FIG. 1 shows a microscope for ophthalmic operation according to the prior art.
As shown in FIG. 1, the microscope for ophthalmic operation comprises a light source 2, an optical cable 3 for guiding visible light that is emitted from the light source 2 and irradiating it to an affected part 20, an objective lens 4 for magnifying the affected part 20, and an ocular lens 5 for seeing the affected part 20 that is magnified by the objective lens 4 with the naked eye.
Visible light that is emitted from light source 2 is guided by optical cable 3 to be irradiated to the affected part 20, and the operator performs operation while observing the affected part 20 that is magnified by objective lens 4 through ocular lens 5.
However, there are several problems in this type of conventional microscope for ophthalmic operation as described in the following.
First, conventional microscope for ophthalmic operation uses visible light that is emitted from halogen light source as the illumination means to illuminate the affected part 20, but it has a problem in that the visible light may cause damage to the eye system, namely, the affected part 20, and long recovery time is required even when the operation has been finished.
In other words, in case where such visible light is used while performing ophthalmic operation, it may cause damage to the eyeball system, particularly to the retina. Thus, medical reports reveal that the incidence of retinal damages due to visible light from the microscope during operation actually occupies approximately 7˜28% of ophthalmic operations that have been conducted until now.
Furthermore, visible light being exposed brightly during operation may cause the patient to lose the sight for some time even when the operation has been finished, and therefore long recovery time is required. This could be compared to the case when a person feels it difficult to see if one looks at the upper beam from a vehicle for a long time and then sees another object.
Second, there is a problem in conventional microscope for ophthalmic operation that an operation is inconvenient and the progress made cannot be examined simultaneously by a plurality of surgeons, since an image of affected part 20 being obtained during the operation should be directly examined by the operator through ocular lens 5.
Moreover, even if an image of affected part 20 is displayed with a monitor, the image of the affected part 20 is merely displayed in two dimensions, thus lacking the real picture, and also there is a problem that it may cause difficulties in the operation for an operator lacking practical experience in ophthalmic operations with such a monitor.